These birds are often carried away by such frantic madness, that they will settle, being quite blinded by fear, upon the very head of the fowler. If he happens to move in the direction of the nest, the female bird that is sitting will run and throw herself before his feet, pretending to be wounded or weak, then, suddenly running or flying for a short distance before him, will fall down as though she had a wing broken; just as he is about to catch her, she will then take another fly, and so keep baffling him in his hopes, until she has led him to a considerable distance from her nest. As soon as she is rid of her fears, and free from all maternal disquietude, she will throw herself on her back in some furrow, and seizing a clod of earth with her claws, cover herself all over. It is supposed that the life of the partridge extends to sixteen years.
The pigeon will never desert its nest, unless it is either widower or widow. They manifest a great degree of affection for their offspring. When the female is sitting, the male renders her every attention that can in any way tend to her solace and comfort. The first thing that they do is to eject from the throat some saltish earth, which they have digested, into the mouths of the young ones, in order to prepare them in due time to receive their nutriment. It is a peculiarity of the pigeon and of the turtle-dove, not to throw back the neck when drinking, but to take in the water at a long draught, just as beasts of burden do.
We read in some authors that the ring-dove lives as long as thirty years, and sometimes forty, without any other inconvenience than the extreme length of the claws, which with them is the chief mark of old age; they can be cut, however, without any danger. The voice of all these birds is similar, being composed of three notes, succeeded by a mournful noise at the end. In winter they are silent, recovering their voice with coming of the spring. Nigidius expresses the opinion that the ring-dove will abandon the place, if she hears her name mentioned under the roof where she is sitting on her eggs: they hatch their young at the summer solstice. Pigeons and turtle-doves live eight years. The sparrow, on the other hand, is short-lived in the extreme. Pigeons appear to have a certain appreciation of glory. They are well aware of the colors of their plumage, and the various shades which it presents, and even in their very mode of flying they court our applause, as they cleave the air in every direction. Through this spirit of ostentation they are handed over, fast bound as it were, to the hawk; for from the flapping of their wings, their long feathers become twisted and disordered; while if they can fly without any impediment, they are far swifter in their movements than the hawk. The robber, lurking amid the dense foliage, keeps on the look-out for them, and seizes them at the very moment that they are indulging their vain-glorious self-complaisance.